I. FREE BACKGROUND IMAGES & TEXTURES

An almost complete guide to many of the sites offering free background images. Focus are free sites with a minimum of ads:

• A good start: Netscape's documented background sampler page with over 60 background images
• Over 1,000 background images for you...
• 392 background textures collected from around the world. No banners, no ads.
• Collection with 70 backgrounds which can be used for personal pages, small business sites, non-profit sites etc.
• 94 Background images, 4-6 per page; different sizes.
• Art textures (background, photographic etc.)
• Over 200 background images for non-commercial use
• Background tips in web design
• 500 Background images
• 97 Free backgrounds and textures in eight categories
• Photo realistic image maps (textures)
• A comprehensive collection ("..of over 330 background textures for Web pages. Almost all of these images are seamless tiles excellent for Web display, 3D rendering, VRML, and even desktop backgrounds after conversion. These images are categorized by themes for ease of navigation...")
• Over 270 backgrounds from around the world)
• Hundreds of free backgrounds for your web pages (sorted in three categories: Tiled, Vertical and Horizontal)
• and more...

II. IMAGES & TEXTURES GRAPHIC GENERATORS

There are excellent tools to create your textures. There are both available for free and as commercial package. Nevertheless, they are equally good:

• An image manipulation texture utility to create your own backgrounds. Allows easily to produce any combination of wavy, bubbly, organic, big, small, wide, narrow, rough or smooth textures. Freeware!
• A texture generator similar to the one above but of commercial nature [$]
• A powerful Texture Designer and Generator [$]
• An animated algorithmic texture generator
• Perlin Texture Generator
• Terrain Texture Generator
• Texture Processor ("..is the unique program for creating various textures. The basic algorithm placed into the heart of Texture Processor allows to get practically unlimited quantity of complex textures in a minimal amount of time. Texture Processor is intended both for 3d-artists and web-designers. Besides, any other users not able to draw in various graphic editors, will receive full pleasure and breadth of actions, working with Texture Processor..." - Freeware)
• and more...